The National Center for State Courts tracks state-by-state legislative activity with potential impact on state courts; providing access to filed and adopted bills. One area of legislative activity relates to changing the number of justices on state’s courts of last resort. In the last 4 years, legislative efforts have been made in 3 states to change that number, marking the largest number of attempts in the last decade One reason these changes take place so rarely is the difficulty in changing the number of justices: 24 states require a constitutional amendment, 24 states give the legislature power to set the number of seats by statute, and 2 states require consent of the court plus legislative action (Alaska and South Dakota).

In the past decade, researchers and policymakers have explored different strategies to improve reentry outcomes for justice-impacted individuals, aiming to deter future crime and contribute to the economic development of underserved communities. One strategy is to increase legal employment and earnings. Yet many employers refuse to hire individuals with a criminal history, based on concerns about legal liability and work-readiness. This report discusses the collateral consequences of a criminal conviction and possible solutions, such as certificates of relief, that do not limit public access to a person’s record (sealing or expungement), but may be effective in reducing many conviction-related disadvantages in the workplace. Certificates of relief have two primary legal effects related to increasing workplace opportunities for the justice-impacted: 1) They reduce legal barriers to occupational licensure based on criminal history; and 2) They limit employer liability in case the person commits another crime or otherwise provokes a suit based on negligence. Researchers found that certificates of relief have been largely ignored in many states by courts that are empowered to dispense them, as well as by the advocacy community whose clients might benefit from them. In addition, state court systems have failed to collect, track, or aggregate basic data like the number of certificate applications, grants, and denials, a failure that makes it almost impossible to evaluate a certificate’s effectiveness in a given state. However, certificates are being used by prison and parole agencies to facilitate reentry for those exiting prison or completing supervision.

Newly released fall 2023 enrollment numbers offer the most detailed look yet at how individual community colleges and state systems have fared since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. While there are clear bright spots when looking at individual colleges, student groups, and states, the overall national picture is sobering: Only 27% of community colleges fully regained their enrollment levels from fall 2019 to fall 2023. And in seven states, fewer than 10% of community colleges restored enrollments to pre-pandemic levels. In Florida, the percentage of colleges that recovered Fall 2023 enrollment to 2019 levels was 21%. Florida’s percent change in fall enrollment between 2019 and 2023 fell 16% from 434,000 students to 364,000 students. Since the onset of the pandemic, state and college leaders have taken steps to build back enrollments and further strengthen community colleges, which are critical for fostering upward mobility and supplying talent for their communities through accessible and affordable postsecondary education. But to recover the losses, which were substantial even before the pandemic, colleges and states must ensure that the programs and courses they offer are worth the return on investment of resources and time.

In 2019 the Alaska Department of Education and Early Development released Transforming Schools: A Framework for Trauma-Engaged Practice in Alaska and supporting resources to help schools address the negative impacts of childhood trauma. To understand how the recommendations in these resources were being implemented in schools across the state, this study used administrative, interview, and survey data to sort schools into three implementation levels (limited, emerging, and high) and identify factors that are correlated with implementation of the resources. Most Alaska schools implemented trauma-engaged practices at an emerging level (the middle level of implementation relative to all study schools). Schools that reported awareness of the resources and schools with higher percentages of students in foster care were associated with higher implementation levels. Implementation level predicted some student outcomes related to school climate and connectedness. Qualitative data from interviews highlighted the need for buy-in, support, and investment to improve the framework’s visibility and practical use in schools. Most schools (63%) demonstrated an emerging level of implementation.

Nonbank mortgage companies—nondepository institutions specializing in mortgage lending—play a major role in the housing finance system. Nonbanks service most mortgages backing securities guaranteed by Ginnie Mae, a government-owned corporation, and by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, enterprises under Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) conservatorships. Since these nonbanks service the majority of federally backed home mortgages failures could significantly disrupt mortgage markets and increase federal fiscal exposure.. . Federal monitoring and oversight of nonbanks is spread among several agencies. Interagency coordination can help address the challenges of managing systemwide risks in a fragmented federal structure. .Since 2020, FHFA and Ginnie Mae have coordinated on aspects of nonbank monitoring, including jointly updating program eligibility requirements (such as capital and liquidity standards) to strengthen nonbank financial capacity and promote consistency; enhancing nonbank reporting of financial data the agencies use for monitoring and risk analysis; and participating in the Financial Stability Oversight Council's (FSOC) task force on nonbank mortgage servicing. Both agencies contributed to a May 2024 FSOC report on the risks of nonbanks. They also have been supporting initiatives to develop risk-monitoring metrics and a plan for interagency coordination in a crisis. However, while Ginnie Mae participated in a 2023 interagency exercise that simulated the failure of a large nonbank mortgage company it did not document lessons learned from the exercise or have processes for doing so. The U.S. Government Accountability Office recommends that Ginnie Mae develop processes for participating in interagency exercises—taking into consideration the potential risks and benefits of sharing nonpublic information in a crisis—and for incorporating lessons learned from the exercises into its strategy for managing nonbank failures. Ginnie Mae neither agreed nor disagreed with GAO's recommendation.

Larger training runs and widespread deployment of future artificial intelligence (AI) systems may demand a rapid scale-up of computational resources (compute) that require unprecedented amounts of power. In this report, the authors extrapolate two exponential trends in AI compute to estimate AI data center power demand and assess its geopolitical consequences. They find that globally, AI data centers could need ten gigawatts (GW) of additional power capacity in 2025, which is more than the total power capacity of the state of Utah. If exponential growth in chip supply continues, AI data centers will need 68 GW in total by 2027 — almost a doubling of global data center power requirements from 2022 and close to California's 2022 total power capacity of 86 GW. More research is needed to assess bottlenecks for U.S. data center build-out and identify solutions, which may include simplifying permitting for power generation, transmission infrastructure, and data center construction.

Federally funded transportation projects have the potential to expand access to opportunity and improve quality of life. Historically, major transportation projects had limited benefits for non-drivers and increased pollution. The U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) has sought to address these issues. This report analyzes how effective DOT has been—now and in the past—in expanding access to transportation in all communities, with an emphasis on those that are historically underserved, overburdened, and disadvantaged. The Urban Institute found that applications for DOT’s Rebuilding American Infrastructure with Sustainability and Equity program (RAISE) grants are more likely to be for projects located in counties with high shares of people of color and higher household incomes. In addition, although the federal government has increased funding to projects in disadvantaged neighborhoods, a substantial share of disadvantaged counties has never had a project funded by the RAISE program.

Electronic cigarettes, also known as e-cigarettes or vapes, are the most commonly used tobacco product among youth in the United States. Data from the 2024 National Youth Tobacco Survey showed that 5.9% of middle and high school students used electronic cigarettes in the past 30 days, a decline from 7.7% in 2023. While cigarettes remain the most commonly used tobacco product among adults, recent trends indicate that electronic cigarette use is increasing among adults. This report uses data from the 2019–2023 National Health Interview Survey to present 5-year trends in electronic cigarette use among adults and to show how prevalence estimates changed between 2019 and 2023 for men and women and by age and race and ethnicity. Key findings include that the percentage of adults who used electronic cigarettes increased from 4.5% in 2019 to 6.5% in 2023. In both 2019 and 2023, men were more likely than women to use electronic cigarettes. In 2023, young adults ages 21–24 were most likely to use electronic cigarettes (15.5%). The percentage of adults who used electronic cigarettes varied by race and ethnicity in both 2019 and 2023. Between 2019 and 2023, the percentage of adults who used electronic cigarettes increased significantly for Black non-Hispanic adults, White non-Hispanic adults, and Hispanic adults. The observed increase in use among Asian non-Hispanic adults and other and multiple-race non-Hispanic adults was not significant.

Millions of Americans get sick from foodborne illness every year. While many cases are mild, some cases can result in hospitalization, long-lasting complications, or even death. The safety and quality of the U.S. food supply is governed by at least 30 federal laws, collectively administered by 15 federal agencies. Federal agencies have developed some agency-specific and joint goals related to reducing foodborne illness, but most of these goals have not been met. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that about 10 million cases of foodborne illnesses each year in the U.S. are caused by six pathogens— including Salmonella, Listeria monocytogenes, Campylobacter, Clostridium perfringens, Shiga toxin-producing Escherichia coli (STEC), and norovirus. These illnesses result in about 53,300 hospitalizations and over 900 deaths annually. However, the precise magnitude of foodborne illness in the U.S. is unknown.

Family peer support services focus on empowering and informing families caring for loved ones with a mental health and/or substance use condition. Families are assisted with understanding and accessing systems, treatment and recovery supports, and providing information about and connection to available resources. The U.S. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration’s Office of Recovery convened the August 2024 Technical Expert Panel on Family Peer Support: Broadening the View to expand these efforts. This event examined the importance of engaging various family roles, including, parent/caregiver, spouse, sibling, and adult child, and the services that would have been helpful on their journey. Participants provided feedback on how to advance recovery through increased access to services and support. The panel found numerous commonalities among participants, including difficulty navigating multiple complex and overwhelming systems and providers; the impact on caregiver’s mental health due to caring for loved ones with mental health or substance use issues; caregivers feeling isolated from the community because of their loved one’s condition; and caregivers often sacrificing their needs and health while caring for loved ones. The panel provides several considerations and recommendations to expand family peer support services, such as engaging peers in collaborative and caring relationships by using strengths-based approaches that focus on family members’ resilience and matching peer support specialists and recipients based on similar family roles.